Conservation Consulting

Conservation Consulting

Your Point of Contact

Justin Miller

This service heading describes the range of consulting services that we provide to biodiversity conservation managers, conservation organisations and private landowners.
Our staff, in partnership with freelance experts, provide strategic and planning advice, project development, project management, facilitation, research and spatial mapping services across a range of projects.
Our employees and partners are experienced and well recognized industry experts with substantial hands-on experience and industry know-how.

Biodiversity Assessments

Biodiversity assessments are used to describe the state of the biodiversity of a certain area (which can range from hectares to millions of square kilometres) e.g. the number of species present and the patterns of biodiversity within the considered area, and, if repeated, should deliver precise estimates of trends in biodiversity.

Fire Services

Fire services offered by NCC include fire break creation and maintenance, fire risk assessments and the compilation of fire management plans. Fire break maintenance is done in accordance with the legal requirements stipulated in Sections 12 and 13 of the National Veld and Forest Fire Act, 1998 (Act No. 101 of 1998), as well as relevant local by-laws. Fire risk assessments comprise the evaluation of premises in order to identify fire safety hazards to people, properties and the environment. Fire management plans are strategic plans detailing specific programmes to be used in the management of both wild and controlled fires.

Protected Area Planning

Protected area planning is a detailed process, including a public participation aspect, which culminates in the compilation of a protected area management plan that adheres to the requirements of Section 39 of the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act, 2003 (Act No. 57 of 2003), according to which a specific protected area will be managed.

Stakeholder Engagement & Public Participation

Public participation/stakeholder engagement is the process by which an organisation consults with interested or affected individuals, organisations, and government entities before making a decision and is a legal requirement associated with a number of environmental processes in South Africa. NCC offers this service of two-way communication and collaborative problem solving with the goal of achieving better and more acceptable decisions with the aim to prevent or minimise disputes by creating a process for resolving issues before they become polarized.

Geographic Information System (GIS)

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) integrate hardware, software and data. Through the use of GIS all forms of geographically referenced information can be captured, managed, analysed and displayed. This enables one to view, understand, interpret and visualise data to reveal relationships, patterns and trends. The relationships found in the data can then be displayed in the form of maps, globes, reports and charts. When it comes to biodiversity management GIS is a helpful tool that can be used to display data for environmentally related assessments such as Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA’s), Basic Assessments (BA’s), Environmental Management Plans (EMP’s), baseline assessments and avifaunal assessments.

Biodiversity Offsets

NCC is exploring the implementation of biodiversity offsets as a way to secure measurable conservation outcomes from actions designed to compensate for significant residual adverse biodiversity impacts arising from project development, after appropriate prevention and mitigation measures have been taken.

Conservation Personnel Capacity Building & Training

Our conservation development professionals focus on delivering operational conservation and management skills training to ensure improved protected area management performance and to also ensure the long term sustainability of sites through skills development and capacity-building of reserve staff. These practical solutions-based training programmes take place in a live environment and are designed to see immediate benefits to the specific site and its operations. Examples of the training include: alien vegetation clearing, biodiversity monitoring, tree and flora identification, avifaunal surveys and identification, soil erosion and land rehabilitation and more. Additional mentoring and coaching also take place to ensure the required workplace-application of new skills for recently training staff members.

Conservation Stewardship & Protected Area Declaration

Good stewardship of our natural environments is vital - on private land as well as government and parastatal owned land. An important aspect of this is extending the footprint of protected areas and improving conservation practices within these areas. NCC is a partner with Conservation at Work who promotes and supports the conservation of private land in the Western Cape. This is primarily achieved by sharing information with landowners, formalising partnerships with stakeholders and mobilising resources for conservation initiatives.

Management Effectiveness Auditing

Monitoring of management effectiveness is vital for smart resource use and with regular auditing this can be achieved.

Post Natural Disaster Auditing

After a natural disaster event, an audit needs to be done to assess damage and to plan a way forward. This service may include mapping, costings, assessment of structural damage, rehabilitation plans, etc.

Vergelegen Estate: Post-fire audit to establish an accurate area burnt by the fire, to audit their invasive non-indigenous plant clearing programme and to update it with respect to the fire damage.

LEDET & ECPTA (2011-2012): Compilation of Protected Area Management Plans and Annual Plan of Operations for the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism and for the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency.

Private Landowners: Preparation of maps for reserves and private land showing different land use, areas or points of special concern, roads and boundaries as well as 3-dimentional modelling and triangulation to calculate surface areas for various land owners.

Eskom & LEDET: Stakeholder engagement and public participation workshops for Eskom and for the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism.

ECPTA: Management effectiveness auditing for the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency using their METTs system.

Related Blog Post

In the latter half of 2011, NCC was awarded a tender by the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism (LEDET) for the development of Reserve Management Plans for 28 of its Provincial Nature Reserves.

Conservation Business Unit Brochure

Other Biodiversity Conservation Services

“To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”― Theodore Roosevelt